Whole Means Healthy so Stop the Opposite

Sometimes Christians behave badly unknowingly. There is a lot on the line when I say that holy means either whole or set apart. They point in diametrically opposed directions for action.

Let me illustrate. This morning on my cutting board, I began with a whole carrot. Because I want to eat the carrot with greater ease later today, I quartered the carrot. In the one case, I was dealing with a whole carrot. In the other case, following my action of cutting the carrot, I was dealing with a carrot that was quartered rather than whole. This is how stark the contrast is between these two ideas, when it comes to taking or choosing a course of action.

The root idea of set apart comes from the action of cutting. The root idea of wholeness is reflected in the opposite action of the leaving the carrot whole. It is seen in the action of uncut. One biblical scholar even uses the analogy of an uncut stone in Deuteronomy to express wholeness.

Allow me to mention one piece of history to reflect how much your course of action can effect others. Then I will return to the present and your decisions.

One very important event in the history of the church in the late 1800s was set off by a course of action that may have been effected by understanding holy as set apart. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a great British preacher, left the Baptist Union over what he called the Downgrade. This whole episode became known as the Downgrade Controversy. What is important is that one of his themes was from the verse that says: "come out from among them and be ye separate" (KJV). Now while this verse does not have holy directly in it. You can see the likely connection that Spurgeon may have made in his mind, if he understood holy as set apart.

Spurgeon had said many times in his sermons that holy means moral wholeness. Yet he also said in other sermons that holy means separateness or being set apart . He also may have brought in the idea of purity in relationship to this word, because of his extensive reading of the English Puritans.

I have a strong sense that when push came to shove for Spurgeon, he made his decision to leave the Baptist Union partly because of his understanding of holiness as separation or being set apart. It was not uncommon from the time of Martin Luther until his day for Christians to recognize both of these meanings for this word.

His action was not just his own. He influenced an entire movement and gave energy at least indirectly to the fundamentalist movement later. Could his course of action been different, if he understood holy as only moral wholeness? It is possible.

Our courses of action will be different, if we understand holy as meaning either as cut or uncut. Holy is a major word for giving us lifestyle instructions in the Bible. It is even on many of its published bindings. It influences courses of action.

I pray that we have not behaved badly as Christians, because we have misunderstood this word. I fear that I did for many years behave badly, because I misunderstood it. I grew up with only the meaning of set apart. I may then have behaved even more extremely than Spurgeon.

I pray that you will be cautious in deciding whether to cut the carrots apart in your life. You may find the strong possibility that you should have left the carrot whole. That could be a little hard to swallow later. As one person puts it, "Be prudent ... when dealing with the unknown or the unpredictable."

Spurgeon did not have some of the scholarly resources we have today to influence his understanding of holy. We do have them. We will be held responsible for our course of action in a way that he was not. We will be judged more harshly, if we choose the wrong course of action.

Please show due caution in cutting yourself off from others. Remember, you could be taking precisely the opposite course of action to what God would have you do.

In Christ,

Jon

Whole Means Healthy After All Else Fails

Thomas Edison was an incredible example of perseverance. While interviewers wanted to know about his final success, he knew that the key was in the 99 attempts that failed and not in the 1 attempt that succeeded. What we often miss is how normal it is to have to keep going after 99 failures. What we maybe miss even more is that we each have a long path of failures before most of our successes.


We think Edison is the exemption, not the rule. Yet from my own experience, long before I considered that whole means healthy, I tried a barrage of other things that failed. I became a real expert on how to fail. Some ideas failed miserably and some failed gloriously, but in the end they all failed. At the ripe age of 10, I thought I found the resolution to my spiritual struggles. Yet at the next struggle, it was ill-equipped to help me. At age 17, I found resolution again to another struggle. Yet at the next struggle, it actually made things far worse and drove me into the darkness of depression. Then at age 23, I again emerged a little more cautious, yet hopeful as I emerged stronger and I was able to defeat depression through lessons from God's Word. Yet once again, this resolution was poorly suited to my next struggle. Still again, I found resolution to another struggle with still more caution and humility. Yet even with that caution and humility, the next struggle was not resolved by my previous lessons. I had to learn yet more and more and still fail and fail. Finally, in 2004, I found a resolution that brought together the lessons of all that I had been taught previously.


Yet in many ways, I can say that I was perhaps open to this 1 resolution, because I had first failed 99 times. I think my thinking arises from knowing what it is to try something and see it fail before being willing to seek out a success. A lot is learned the hard way. Only after that, does 1 idea come the easy way.


I consider that one of the greatest applications of what I have learned from wholeness is that Edison was right and the interviewer wrong. This world is not a place where everyone is seeking success and just needs to find it. Rather people often have to fail at something else before they will accept a successful option. As long as they see something as potentially successful, even if everyone else knows it will fail, they will hold onto that bound to fail option.


Again, I see this with my own strength or my physical health. I have tried many many options to bring my physical health to where it should be. Yet I still have an unresolved difficulty. A resolution came in 2003 for 6 months, yet neither I nor my doctors to this date, understand what made the difference. So I am still trying options that might potentially work. Like Edison, yet under the inspiration of the hope that God inspires, I am marching on toward what I hope will resolve my health issue for the long term.


Yet it is often a long and lonely path. It seems that so many things I have tried, that I thought would work or a doctor thought would work, have failed. It is also true that the path is lonely, because there are many naysayers that claim to know the answer already. They perhaps think that 99 attempts must mean I am on the wrong path. Yet there lurks the danger for them.
Yet I now know this. Wholeness has brought many successes that were not previously there. It has also continued to meet new challenges the previous failures did not. I think Thomas Kuhn, the sociologist of science, and Imre Lakatos, the philospher of science, both had it right. Old ideas die hard. They must fail before we give up on them. That sounds sort of biblical doesn't it, in light of our sinful tendencies.


Perhaps failure is the soil that then the plant of success can grow in. It is as though the seed cannot be planted until the ground is well tilled. So when people still resist an idea, perhaps it is true, they are still working on a failure. Just wait until they realize the failure. Just maybe then, they will accept the one thing that succeeds after all else fails.


In Christ,


Jon